Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Obama wins, heavy Silicon Valley support

"If dollars translate into votes then tech's top companies are squarely behind Barack Obama, by a better than 5 to 1 margin if you believe the Center for Responsive Politics and its latest stats on the issue.

The group put together donation records for some of the top companies in Silicon Valley and the numbers are striking. Overall, Obama outraised John McCain $1,434,719 to $267,041. Google [GOOG 366.94 20.45 (+5.9%) ]was Obama's single biggest corporate donor, racking up $485,961 in donations, compared to only $20,600 for John McCain. It's no accident that Google is Obama's top donor, especially with a high profile endorsement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who appeared in the candidate's infomercial recently. As for McCain's biggest corporate donor? That'd be Cisco Systems[CSCO 18.33 1.13 (+6.57%) ], where CEO John Chambers is a vocal supporter of McCain as a co-chairman of his campaign. Employees there forked over $80,676 to McCain. But those donations still didn't measure up to the $149,078 Cisco employees also sent Obama's way.

Oracle [ORCL 18.90 0.57 (+3.11%) ]was also a huge Obama donor: $134,421 for the Democratic candidate and $36,586 for McCain. The only company among the top donors tilting in McCain's favor? Sanmina-SCI, raising $250 for Obama, and $2,800 for McCain.

Important to note: The Center for Responsive Politics says some contributors didn't identify their employer so all of this might not represent every donation. Also important: McCain's fundraising was limited because he accepted public-financing while Obama did not, so that might skew the numbers in Obama's favor as well."